|
I really enjoy playing a paladin in raids;
the support unit of the group. Paladins are able to have simple aoe
(consecration), ability have basic tanking abilities, cleanses poison,
disease, or magic (No curse though…), healing skills, has the ability of
resurrect, and many other tricks. This
is a very sloppy …draft of my guide. I’m SLOWLY updating it but I’ll make an
official version of it soon as I’m done with the revknight guild politics..
MC here we come!!
(Note I have different gear for different
situations so you will see a mix-match of the gear)
http://wow.allakhazam.com/profile.html?113123 I planning to get the entire Light Forge
Set (like most paladins). I also have different gear for different
situations such as healing and pvping. Here is a list of what I have/will
get. Ok
first off, I will talk about the blessings. YOU MUST WATCH THE BLESSING
TIMER. The 5 minutes blessings suck so keep a close eye. What I like to do is
bless myself first then everyone else. Why? Because I will be the first
person where the blessing will end. If I watch the blessing timer on myself I
know that when I reach around 30 seconds or so the other members should be
around 30 - 40 seconds, time to re-bless. Also I like to re-bless as soon as
possible, even when the timer is at 2 - 3 minutes. The reason for this is
that many people do not wait for your blessing; 5 minutes suck. So after
battles or a few battles I like to just re-bless everyone for save
measures. Types of aura: (The primary ones) Devotion Aura – Adds a certain amount of
armor to your group. A must for any raids since at level 60 it adds about 735
armor. Great for casters. Retribution Aura – Does holy damage to mobs
that hit you; similar to the druid’s thornes. Concentration Aura – Increases the chance
of ignoring spell interruptions by 35%. All classes uses some sort of channel
spell and this aura helps you cast it as soon as possible when you are
getting attacked. Resistance Auras – 3 different types of
resistances, shadow, ice, and fire. Fire resistance gives you a total of 60
reduction points. Great in Molten Core and other high level instances. Seals – The primary seal I use is SoC, seal of
command. It is a random proc that does holy damage equal to your weapon. So
lets say I have a weapon that does 100 damage, my SoC can dish out about 100
damage + critical holy damage. I had situations where I did about 1100
critical damage and about 1000 SoC critical damage with the ice spear from
battlegrounds. SoC does have a bug where the mob can dodge or block the holy
damage. For some reason blizzard doesn’t want to fix now, it will
eventually.. I hope. I also use SoR, seal of righteousness. The proc rate for
SoC isn’t the best; I did have cases where I dished out SoC damage 4-5 times
in a row. SoR helps with arggo in that it does holy damage nearly every
attack. More damage = more pissed of mob. Seal of light and wisdom is great
when you solo. I tend to use SoC while I solo but when I solo elites or hard
mobs I like to use judgment of light with seal of light. SoW adds mana to
your mana pool for each attack. Great when you are low on mana but don’t have
the time to rest. Each seal lasts 30 seconds so watch the
timer frequently. Judgments – The best ability that the paladins have. We
are able to judgment a seal onto a mob so that members can have additional
abilities. JoJ
– Judgment of Justice - This is a must for any mobs that run in fear. After
running an instance a few times you will know the mobs that tend to run when
low on health. You gotta take care of these guys or else they will arggo more
mobs. It is best to use seal of justice then judgment it when the mob has
about 2/5 to half their hp left since all judgments last for 30 seconds. JoC – Judgment of Crusader – lets raid
members do extra holy damage to the mob. This is great in undead instances
like Scholomance where paladins have all that anti-undead spells. JoW – Judgment of Wisdom – One of the
better judgments. This judgment allows attacking members to gain a certain
amount of mana from each attack. Wow, do this on an elite or boss and you
mana poll will slowly rise. This works for all mana users. JoL – Judgment of Light – Great for bosses.
This helps the MT gain a little health to help the priest out a bit. The only
bad thing about JoL is that only melee attacks will proc this heal. Magic
damage will not proc the JoL so it is useless for casters. JoW procs to any
type of damage that is done to the targeted mob. There are more judgments, one for each seal,
but these are the common ones that I use. DIVINE INTERVENTION – THE PALADIN ANTI WIPE
ABILITY – Ooh damn what a great gift Blizzard gave
us. I have used this a few times and just.. wow what a life saver, well not
for you the paladin. When
the raid looks like it will wipe you get another paladin or priest to move
away from the mob like to a wall or the previously cleared room and just cast
DI on them. You are sacrificed, killed, but the DI’ed member will have a
protective shield that prevents them from doing anything for 30 seconds but
at the same time removes ALL arggo and makes you immune to all damage. A must
for all paladins. Before the new patch came out there was a trick where a
paladin can use divine shield and DI a raid member without dying. This has
been corrected so that the paladin will die after a DI. My raiding tactics for high level
instances. As a
support unit I must concentrate on the following (in that order): Buffing, Protection, Healing, Cleansing. In a
ten to fifteen person raid one or two paladins must be the designated
protector. Usually no one does this so I tend to stick to it. What is the
designated protector? It is the off tank that handles any extra mobs that go
after our casters/healers. Usually I hang back with the casters/healers or I
am in front of them. Ok so how is this done? In a
raid there should be the main tank as well as some support tanks. These are
the ones that should always be in front, unless we are doing a sap, sheep, or
shackle pull. Since there is a decent amount of tanks, main and support, they
should be able to hold the arggo of the mobs. When there are about one to two
elites I switch my position to support tanking and help arggo the mobs. When
there are more then two or more elites I tend to stay back and get my heals and
debuffs ready. I just watch and make sure that the casters/healers suffer the
least amount of damage. The reason for this is that if a loose elite mob is
after the casters, the main source of damage, and healers, our..healers, then
they will be busy concentrating on saving their own butts which stops the
dps/healing pattern on the main mobs. As the off tank you must control these
loose mobs so that the casters and healers can efficiently do their jobs. The
best way to get arggo off from the loose mobs is by using the 1 minute
cooldown spell “hammer of justice”. This stuns the mob for about six seconds
which gives me enough time to gain arggo. During the six seconds a mage or
some other character might sap, sheep, or shackle this unit so make sure you
can disengage as soon as possible. This is hard to do and I have failed many
times to disengage a sheeped loose mob. There should be no real worries about
this as long as you can hold the arggo, which is extremely difficult for a
paladin. The best method to continue to hold arggo after the stunning effects
of the hammer of justice is to dish out as much holy damage as possible. This
is done by the use of seal of command since with my current 1hand weapon can
do a critical of 600 damage. Seal of righteousness does holy damage with
about 95% of your hits so that can help you get arggo. We also have the seal
of justice where we can have a random but low proc rate to stun the elite. I
rarely use it due to the low stun proc rate but this could be a method that
you paladins might like. During this entire process you must make sure the
raid is surviving the battle. This is done by the use of a mod called CT_Raid
Assist which is located in the ctmod.com website. This fantastic modification
gives us a list of all the members of the raid and gives us information on
the buffs that they have and their health status. As a paladin I configured
it to see only paladin buffs so that I know which member has what and to know
what buff to give. I configured ctra so that it will interrupt any heals to
the target when it has about 90% health so that I can safe precious mana.
While you are off tanking make sure everyone is debuffed/ cleansed and
buffed, yes I have buffed in a middle of a battle but only when I am in the
off tank raid position. I
have been in many raids and the majority of paladins that I have grouped up
with do not know their roles; this also includes the various few players that
confuse paladins as primary healers or primary main tanks. This causes a lot
of trouble in raids where paladins don’t buff or don’t watch the damage meter
of the party. I see a few priests and druids that do not heal ‘correctly’..
well from experience I believe that there is a order that all group primary
healers should follow. This is the order that I believe priests and/or druids
should heal: party tank, raid main tank, self, party members, raid members.
These dedicated healers should concentrate on the main tanks since they will
suffer a lot of damage. The paladin’s role here is to heal the group. In most
high end instances you really only need two tanks, one main and off tank, and
the mobs are fairly simple to take care of if you have a good group so the
group main healers should be able to heal the group which lets the paladins
concentrate on debuffing and support tanking. Paladin and its mana supply. As a
paladin you must carry around major mana potions and superior mana potions.
The major mana potions are only used during emergencies so I only keep about
one to two stacks of these. I use an average of two to four major mana
potions during a decent raid. I also keep about two stacks of the superior
mana potions for small emergences such as a minor add. I usually spend about
two of these potions a raid since there are usually more big emergency then
minor ones. Even though you will not use up an entire stack of mana potions,
it is wise to keep extras in your inventory since we are going to raid in end
game instances. I
also keep a stack of major heal potion but I rarely use it, last time I used
one was when I was about level 57 – 58. The reason for this is that I have
the talent called divine favor. This is a must have spell for all paladins.
This is an instant spell that lasts 15 seconds with a two minute cool down
which gives you a 100% chance of getting a critical heal. So let’s say I cast
this and I use the best heal I have which is holy light (rank 8). Holy light
rank 8 gives you about 1300 hp. With divine favor I get about 2300+ hp every
two minutes. This is great in pvp duels. Ok
back to the mana potions. This is up to you. I have seen paladins use no
potions during a raid (quite a few of them are the ones that I listed before
as not knowing their roles) I usually save at least one major mana potions on
boss fights where I must help with the heals, this is true in the case of the
General in Upper Blackrock Spire. I also have used the major mana potions
while I have been the primary group healer and I even had one raid where I
was the designated raid healer, yeah we were not successful. I usually use
the major potions when there are many people with low health. Also since I
switch postions from off tank to support healer I use bandages to heal. Yes I
have occasionally used heavy runecloth bandages in the middle of a battle. I
did that recently in a Scholomance raid where we only had one druid and three
paladins. (Paladins as support healers occur
constantly but as primary healers, do not occur that often. I have been a
primary healer paladin a few times and the following is what I did.) Primary healing role. During this Scholomance raid I was the
primary healer of one of the groups. When you are the primary healer whether
you are a priest, a druid, and rarely a paladin do not go and attack. You are
the healer not a damage unit. You must heal and only heal. On a side topic I
have grouped with many primary healer druids that attack and even had a group
in Maraudon where a priest was tanking the group, freaking amazing. Ok so
while I was in the primary group healer I gave everyone blessing of salvation
so that it will help reduce arggo which will help them receive less damage.
There was one hunter in the group so I gave him blessing of wisdom since he
can fake his death to remove arggo. I dished out my best healings once the
group members health went to 80% since it takes time to cast the heals so by
the time the heal is fully channeled their health points could be down to
50%. I also must have a target selection process. This is fairly simple in
that you heal the mage first then the rogues. The hunter is last to be healed
since he did fake his death once in a while to remove arggo. When you run out
of mana check the boss/mob’s health. If the boss’s or mob’s health is high
then you must use the major mana potion and continue to dish out your heals.
I use three types of heals: rank 8, rank 5 (I think. About half the mana of
rank 8) and flash of light. I use flash of light when there is aoe damage to
the group and when the group has about 90% health. there was instances where
the entire group was losing health slowly so I dished out the flash of light
to each member as soon as possible. When we fought the green undeads which
gives of a poisonous gas I dish out the rank 8 heals and get the lowest
first. During a few boss fights I have run out of mana and used up a potion
so what do you do? Use your first aid bandages. Yep that’s what I did. I ran
up as close as I can and use my heavy runecloth bandages. It helps when you
use a paladin shield when you are bandaging the members up since some of the
bosses do aoe damage. Paladin and Molten Core Guess what guys/gals… yep its all about
healing, buffing, and cleansing. I’ll write more about this later but I do
want to talk about healing procedures. (Gonna make this short, its 2 in the
morning….) Paladins should stick to group heals only.
If there is a priest/druid and the raid is in trouble then they should switch
roles to raid healing. Paladins and primary healers in the group
must..MUST communicate constantly about mana issues. I grouped up with a
crimson fist priest during my first MC run, we talked to eachother when we
ran out of mana (so the other can switch healing roles to group, raid, MT,
etc) I also told the healer which group I would be healing (when a healer
goes down) and if I am healing the MT so that we know what to do/ who to
heal. .. |